Fishing for government help

Rob Boutilier, president of the Port Morien Wildlife Association, scoops up some trout fry at the association’s hatchery on Thursday. (STEVE WADDEN)

BIRCH GROVE — Rob Boutilier and the other members of the Port Morien Wildlife Association are hoping to give children more opportunities to fish and to make Cape Breton Island a trout fishing destination.

They just need a building and a clean water source.

With Cape Breton Regional Municipality getting ready to lift Sand Lake’s designation as a drinking water supply, the timing couldn’t be better.

The municipality no longer needs the lake near Glace Bay or its watershed, because the area’s drinking water comes from a reservoir at the MacAskill Brook Dam.

Boutilier, the association president and a retiree from nearby Birch Grove, said the Sand Lake chlorination building and a storage building next to it would be ideal for the group’s trout hatchery.

“Right now, they’re sitting empty and they have no more use for them,” he told regional council Wednesday. “Our goal right now is to turn those two empty buildings into a fish hatchery.

“This is not fish I’m raising in a lake, like a salmon farm or anything like that. We’re taking eggs and putting them in boxes and getting oxygen from the water flowing through.

“We’re going to raise one to four million trout fry … but we definitely need a bigger spot. It would be tremendous for CBRM. It would make the best trout fishing east of Ontario within four years.”

The association has asked the municipality to lease the Sand Lake buildings for $1 a year, because the group’s hatchery needs to move soon.

The association is more than 45 years old and the members have been raising trout and stocking lakes and rivers across Cape Breton for more than 38 years.

They get 250,000 brook trout eggs free from the provincial Frasers Mills fish hatchery in Antigonish every February. The Port Morien group hatches the trout and raises them in a pair of custom-made fibreglass boxes on private land.

Water from a pond flows by gravity through the box with the eggs, which hatch around May 1. The hatchlings survive on their yolk sacs until they are large enough to swim to the next box. From there, members take a bucket full of fry and distribute about 5,000 at a time in streams and lakes around Cape Breton.

The Port Morien group is one of two in the municipality that raise and stock trout around the island. The New Waterford and Area Fish & Game Association runs a similar operation in River Ryan.

Boutilier said this method improves the hatchlings’ chance of survival, because they are able to become self-sufficient without fear of predators. As a bonus, they remain wild fish.

“In the wild, they’ve got a 20 per cent chance of survival,” he said on a tour of the hatchery. “The way I’m doing it, they’ve got a 99 per cent chance of living.”

The hatchery is under threat of having to move, Boutilier said, because the pond and its waterway straddle the property line and the neighbouring land is up for tax sale. The association needs to find a new location this year, he said, because a new landowner next door could easily force the hatchery to move with seven days’ notice.

Boutilier said the group doesn’t need power, but with access to the old water supply buildings at Sand Lake, it could increase the size of its operation and keep it secure.

The association raises about $3,000 a year through two fundraising suppers and spends the money on fishing derbies. Boutilier said the most recent youth derby cost the group $2,000, but there was no registration fee for participants and each received a lure at the start of the derby. Once the fishing was done, the top seven in each age group received a new rod and tackle box, and everyone enjoyed hotdogs and pop.

“It’s to get the kids into fishing,” said Boutilier. “That’s the big thing. Get them away from iPhones and computers.”

Council was unable to immediately grant the association’s request to lease the buildings, because there is an all-terrain vehicle group that is also interested in the Sand Lake facilities and the municipality needs to examine the possible future use of the buildings.